In this information age, there are many ways for people to acquire information. For example, large-screen playing devices can be found everywhere in public places such as department store, brand store, subway, and airport. Large volume of multi-media content is displayed on those devices. When a user sees the media content being displayed on the large screen playing devices, the user may want to acquire more information associated with the media content being displayed.
As an illustrative example, a consumer at a subway station sees that a large screen is playing a video of a product, and is interested in the product. The consumer may want to acquire more information about the product. Typically, the consumer can log into the network by using a portable device (e.g., a mobile phone) to search for the product using keywords. The search will generate a voluminous set of data, and the consumer will have to sift through the data to find the information that is relevant to the product. While an advertisement-to-sale conversion may occur, the conversion process (including the search and post-processing of the search result) is inefficient, resulting in lower advertisement-to-sale ratio. Moreover, such a process of acquiring information can require complicated operation by a user, while also taking up huge amount of network resources.
In order to provide information in a more efficient manner, a commonly-used technique in the prior art is insertion of a two-dimensional code in an image picture being displayed on the large screen. A viewer can then scan the two-dimensional code with an App installed in a portable terminal, to acquire additional information about the image being currently displayed.
While this technique is convenient for gathering information, it has a number of short-comings. First, implanting a two-dimensional code picture in an image affects the completeness of the image, which affects its aesthetic appearance as well as a quality of the video displaying of the image. Moreover, scanning a two-dimensional code requires a long time and comes with a risk of, for example, the two-dimensional code disappearing in the video display before the scanning is completed. Further, for accurate scanning, the portal terminal (installed with the App for scanning the code) needs to be aimed at a two-dimensional code zone. It is difficult to maintain the scanning accuracy among multiple users, who can be scanning at different angles and from different distances. Moreover, for a public large screen, the user is typically located at a long a distance from the screen, making it even more difficult to acquire the two-dimensional code information accurately and efficiently.
Therefore, there is a need for a technique to provide information associated with media content being displayed on a display screen, which enables a user to acquire the information more efficiently and accurately.